That doesn’t sound over the top at all. I think that’s a you thing. My parents love to see pics of their grandchildren. The screensaver on their TV used to be the photo album of all the recent kids pics. That feature doesn’t work on their new TV (even though it should) and my dad spent hours trying to make it work to no avail. They would love to get a present like that.
I think it shows stuff from Google Calendar, though I don’t know because I use Outlook primarily.
You can set reminders that gently vibrate with a label on them, and I use those, too, but sometimes I just need an alarm. I almost never read reminders as soon as they come up, so I try not to use those for time critical purposes, but more stuff like (monthly) “reconcile checking account” and (weekly) “clean CPAP.”
An alarm is like, “stop messing around and go get your laundry before you forget it’s in there.” Or, “You’ve forgotten to do this five times already so this time I really mean it.”
I was actually surprised at how many people have a need to do this.
I posted the code to GitHub with a goof proof installer and made a video showing how it worked and how to set it up. It’s all driven by great open-source command-line tools like ImageMagik and LibreOffice, Ghostscript, and pqiv, knit together with a set of scripts that run as services, with Samba providing the “drop box”. Most of my mildly technical videos are lucky to pass 100 views, but this one has 1,200 views so far.
So anyone who wants to set up a simple announcements display with a spare TV:
A DIY, Free-Software Announcements Frame for Churches and Small Shops
My sister bought one of those frames for my mother. Mom loves seeing new pictures of her grandchild pop up randomly. The spirit of this thread was about new technological features that makes things more complicated with very little benefit. I suppose the frames are more complicated than a regular photo, but the benefit seems obvious to me.
All grandparents want is to see pics of their grandchildren. Makes gift-giving so much easier. My husband does a Mixbook (photobook) featuring our son every year and every year his parents and grandmother coo and demand more. I am not a grandparent but I would imagine someone getting random, real-time photos of their grandchildren beamed into their living room is straight euphoria.
Probably especially true if they live far away.
Yep. I want one
Absolutely! Used for their intended purpose, I think these digital frames are a fun and amazing bit of technology to bridge the generations.
Fancy Smancy glass backetball court being replaced with wood after less than a week. I cannot find an estimate for the cost. I’m going to guess a shitload.
OMG, at first I thought you were talking about the backboard. This is the whole floor of the court that was an LED screen. What a terrible idea.
I also thought it was the backboard that was replaced.
It DID look cool!
The first time i had this feature it bothered me, because i interpreted the beeping as “too close”, and it beeped every time i pulled into my garage.
Then i realized that the beeping varied depending on how close i was. And i reinterpreted it as “this close”, and treated it as a clunky form of sonar. After that, i found it helpful. I’m happy to have it on my new car.
'Zactly. It’s an audible ruler of distances you can’t necessarily see well. You have 3 feet, 2.5 feet, 2 feet, 1.5 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches!!! as the beeping gets faster, louder, and more insistent.
It also plays the sound from the corner of the audio system where the risk is. Right front, left rear, middle left, etc.
Darn handy.
About the Internet-connected, collectively-filled picture frames: We have one in the family, on my sibling’s desk at work. The content is in the Cloud, and everybody in the family gets notified when a new picture is added. So far, so good. The usual suspect will upload a funny or embarrassing picture once in a while, haha, but generally it works.
Then one of the youngsters got separated. On amicable terms, but still.
What do we do with the former girlfriend? She’s on the mailing list and in some of the pictures. Do we delete the pictures where she appears? She’ll see that. Do we expell her from the group? Pictures on the mantlepiece were simpler.
I would remove her from the mailing list. I no longer use the group chat that included my son’s ex. My son is still friendly with his ex, they are on a lot of the same discord servers and say nice things about each other’s knitting projects. And I’m in some of the same in-real-life social groups as his ex, and we are still friendly, too. But the ex is no longer part of my family.
Absolutely, but first take away her ability to upload. What a way to get back at an ex - share their nekkid pics on their family’s album.
Wait, a radio remote for THE CAR? Yeah, that is stupid. So now I have the distraction of fishing under the seat for the remote whenever I drop it.
The actual modern technology solution is radio controls on the steering wheel and voice controls with station info displayed on the car’s HUD.
Sprinkler timers/clocks.
I really mis the old electro/mechanical timers. Very easy to ‘program’ and a quick glance at it showed exactly what it was going to do.
The new digital jobs are a pain in the ass to program, and understand just what it’s gonna do.
I’ve worked for three sprinkler companies, one that I owned, and then was a programmer for 33 years.
A lot of this was brought on because of watering restrictions, I get that. Also they are a hell of a lot cheaper. But stop putting too many function in too few buttons (press and hold for this, press quickly for that. Press < and > for this other thing). And by god if you insist on doing that make the instructions clear and easy to understand. And give me a bloody ‘RESET’ button so I can start from scratch.